Why 99% of Online Courses Are Doomed—Here’s Why I’m Still Betting on Them
Let’s stop pretending. The old way of doing online courses isn’t “struggling.” It’s collapsing.
Completion rates are abysmal. Sales are slowing. And the advice floating around—“just bake in a community,” “throw in a few templates,” “host office hours”—isn’t strategy. It’s rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
If no one else will say it, then I’m going to:
Courses aren’t broken. The way we build and deliver them is.
For the last decade, creators have been selling the same thing in slightly shinier packaging: six modules, lifetime access, maybe a bonus mini-course if you’re lucky. That model worked when information was scarce. But in 2025, when AI will write you a strategy in 30 seconds and YouTube has a free tutorial for everything? Selling knowledge alone is like selling bottled water next to a waterfall.
The old playbook is dead. But the next era of courses, that’s where the real opportunity lies.
Quick note before we go further: this post is sponsored by Teachable. Which, if you think about it, is perfect. Because if anyone has a front-row seat to how courses have changed and what’s coming next, it’s them. Teachable isn’t clinging to the old playbook. They’re evolving right alongside the creators who will define what’s next!
All the tools you need to create and sell premium education products are on Teachable. We do earn an affiliate payment at no extra cost to you should you sign up. Read our affiliate disclaimer.
The Old Playbook Is Dead
For years, online education has been the Wild West. Slap together a slide deck, hit record, toss it in a gated login, and boom—you’re a course creator.
And people bought it. Hell, they devoured it. From 2015 to 2019, the “$1997 signature course” was the crown jewel of internet entrepreneurship. You could launch once, brag about five-figure months, and call yourself a business coach.
Then the gold rush ended.
By 2020, every VA, copywriter, designer, and “I just quit my job yesterday” coach had a course. The market flooded. Quality tanked. And buyers wised up. Ironically, the ones early to the market had their biggest years yet in 2020 & 2021.
Now it’s 2025, and let’s be real: nobody is excited to fork over a grand for six pre-recorded modules they’ll never finish. They already know the dirty secret: most courses are padded, bloated, and stuffed with obvious shit you could Google for free.
The old playbook—record a course, promise “lifetime access,” and collect passive income while you sip margaritas—isn’t just outdated. It’s misleading. It trained an entire generation of creators to value volume of content over results. To hide behind “but it’s all in there!” instead of asking if anyone actually got what they came for.
And most of the industry is still in denial. They’re doubling down, trying to duct-tape fixes onto a broken model.
“Just add a community.”
“Just add office hours.”
“Just drip the modules instead.”
No. Stop. Those are band-aids, not solutions. Those are excuses.
The course isn’t failing because you didn’t sprinkle enough Slack threads or worksheets on top. It’s failing because the entire model is stale.
You’re not alone in this. I wanted to pretend like the rest of us a few small tweaks would be enough. That somehow I could out-teach a market that was already drowning in content.
I know you aren’t hungry for more. You’re desperate for speed, certainty and outcomes. We all are. But no amount of reformatting could change the fact that the very structure of “traditional courses” was working against them.
That was a hard pill to swallow, because it meant admitting the thing I’d built my business on was no longer built to last. It meant letting go of the comforting idea that what worked in 2017 would still work in 2025 if I just hustled harder.
But if I’ve learned anything in the last decade, it’s this: the market doesn’t wait for us to feel ready. The world evolves. Buyers evolve. And if we don’t evolve with them, we get left behind. RIP Blockbuster.
It’s time to wake the hell up.
What Buyers Actually Want Now
Here’s the part course creators hate admitting: people still want to learn, but they don’t want what you’re selling.
They don’t want twelve hours of talking-head videos.
They don’t want a bloated “lifetime access” login they’ll never open again.
They don’t want to buy information and then feel guilty when they don’t use it.
What do they want?
Certainty. Not “six modules of theory.” They want the confidence that if they follow your system, they’ll get a result.
Speed. Not “watch 87 lessons at your own pace.” They want the fastest possible path to done.
Access. Not to 500 fellow students in a Slack channel. They want you, your brain, your shortcuts—or at least the illusion of it.
Assets. Not endless how-to videos. They want plug-and-play tools, templates, and done-for-you pieces they can actually use.
Urgency. Not “forever access.” They want deadlines, accountability, and stakes—because that’s what gets them to move.
Nobody is sitting around craving another six-module video library. They’re craving transformation they can actually feel.
Most creators keep trying to dress up their content instead of rethinking their delivery. They’re stuck asking, “How can I make my course more engaging?” when the real question is, “Why does this need to be positioned as a course at all?”
Radical Reinventions
If you want to future-proof your education business, you can’t think in tweaks. You have to think in revolutions.
That doesn’t mean recording your lessons in 4K. It means tearing up the old blueprint and asking, “What would this look like if it didn’t even resemble a course anymore?”
Here are just a few examples of what that could mean:
Ephemeral Education. What if your content self-destructed in 24 hours? No replays, no “lifetime access”. Just urgency. People don’t binge Netflix because they “have access forever.” They binge because it’s right now or never.
Anti-Course Pricing. What if you let people pay after they got results? No upfront fee. No excuses. You put your skin in the game, they put theirs in after. Risky? Yes. Radical? Absolutely.
From Courses → Assets. What if instead of teaching someone how to build an ad campaign, you just gave them 500 proven ad scripts, ready to copy-paste? Education becomes a byproduct of the asset, not the product itself.
And those are just the tip of the iceberg.
The future doesn’t belong to the people squeezing more life out of the $297 evergreen course. It belongs to the ones bold enough to reimagine what teaching, learning, and selling transformation can actually look like.
The courses that survive won’t look like courses at all.
The Future Belongs to Scientists
99% of course creators will keep clinging to the old playbook. They’ll keep polishing their videos, tweaking their funnels, and convincing themselves they’re different. Yikes.
They’ll ride that sinking ship straight to the bottom.
But the 1%? They’ll win—not because they’re smarter, or because they shout louder on social—but because they’re willing to burn the blueprint and build something new.
Those are the scientists.
The ones who treat their course business like a lab, not a library.
The ones who stop asking, “How do I sell more modules?” and start asking, “How do I deliver more transformation?”
The future doesn’t belong to “course creators.” That phrase itself is outdated. The future belongs to people designing ecosystems, experiences, and movements.
And the difference will be obvious. The 99% will fight for scraps in a market that’s tired, jaded, and over it. The 1% will capture attention, loyalty, and revenue because they dared to evolve.
The question is: which side do you want to be on?
The Platform That Lets You Evolve
Now, let’s get real for a second. Reinventing your course business doesn’t just take guts—it takes infrastructure. You can have the wildest idea in the world, but if your platform boxes you in, you’re stuck playing the same tired game.
That’s why the tools you build on matter.
I’ve stayed on Teachable for more than 9+ years not because it’s a place to dump videos (there are a dozen tools that can do that), but because it gives me the flexibility to evolve.
Want to sell a traditional course? Easy.
Want to run a cohort or live program? Done.
Want to bundle courses with coaching, templates, memberships, or even physical products? Teachable can handle it.
Want to experiment with pricing, exclusivity, or access models? You’re not locked in—you can test and pivot.
Teachable isn’t just software. It’s the sandbox where you can try new things without burning everything down. It’s the only reason I’ve been able to keep evolving as the market shifts.
Most platforms are built for the past. Teachable is built for what’s next.
Evolve or Get Left Behind
You can keep clinging to the old playbook, crossing your fingers while your sales slide and your students disengage. Or you can evolve. You can be the one who experiments, reinvents, and builds the kind of offers that people talk about for years to come.
Courses aren’t dead. But the way we’ve been building them is.
The question is—are you willing to wake up to that? Are you ready to stop tweaking at the edges and start building for what’s actually next?
I pulled together The Next-Gen Course Creator Playbook: 16 Radical Models to Future-Proof Your Education Business to give you a head start. These are not recycled tips about adding a Facebook group or making “better” slides. They’re bold, unconventional frameworks you can steal, adapt, and test right now.
The sooner you stop thinking like a “course creator” and start thinking about your next experiment, the sooner you’ll join the 1% shaping the future of this industry.
Because the future won’t wait. And neither should you.
